Katie set to release two singles to mark St Valentine’s Day!

Having had the honour of singing for President Michael D. Higgins while she was a final year student in DCU, Ballymahon singer/songwriter and local music teacher, Katie Gallagher, is set to release two of her own songs on February 12 next, - just in time for St Valentine’s Day!

“While both songs are set around the theme of love, they are a complete contrast to each other actually as one was written especially for the romantics while the second one is all about people who are looking for love,” says Katie, who performs under the name ‘KTG.’

As well as working as a music teacher in Athlone Community College (where she also teaches English to international students) and running her own music school, Tremeloe Entertainment, in her native Ballymahon, Katie Gallagher has been prolific in her songwriting over the past year, despite the fact that the music industry has ground to a halt due to the coronavirus pandemic.

“I actually wrote the two songs that are due for release on February 12 in January of last year, but I felt the time wasn’t right to release them with Covid-19 having impacted so much on everyone’s life, so I have decided to release them now in an effort to give people something to look forward to and give them a lift,” she says.

The first single is called “Melon” and is based on a couple that Katie knew some years ago who asked her to write a song that might be suitable for the first dance at their wedding. “No sooner had I written the song than they went their separate ways, so they never actually got to hear it, but it is a romantic song and I hope it will appeal to all the romantics out there who really believe in true love,” says Katie.

The second single from KTG which is due for simultaneous release is “The Canal” which tells the story of someone who decides to walk away from a bad situation. “I think in lockdown a lot of us have ended up falling in love with the idea of a person rather than the real person, and there is a bit of that type of scenario in ‘The Canal’,” she says.

Coming from a musical family – her mother, Jo, was an All-Ireland Scór Champion in Singing – Katie Gallagher says she was never interested in sport, so her parents, Tommy and Jo, were anxious for her to have some sort of hobby.

Music became that hobby from an early age when she began attending music lessons, she says.

Songwriting became a way of expressing her feelings at first, and when she started her teacher training in DCU she continued to write music as well as availing of every musical opportunity that presented itself in college. “I was very lucky in DCU and they were unbelievably supportive, and still are,” she says.

She was selected by her tutors to perform some of her own songs for President Michael D. Higgins when he came to St Pat’s to open a new student wing, and a week later she also performed her own material for former President, Mary McAleese. After graduating with a teaching degree in Religion and Music two years ago, Katie Gallagher says she was “over the moon” to land a job as a music teacher in Athlone Community College, and she also owns her own music school in Ballymahon, Tremeloe Entertainment.

With six teachers attached to the school, and lessons in everything from the harp to the ukulele, along with guitar, drums, piano, fiddle, singing and speech and drama for students from four years of age right up to students in their 60s, Katie Gallagher is extremely busy.

“All the lessons are online at the moment, which is frustrating, but the students have been absolutely brilliant, just like the students in Athlone Community College, and I am constantly amazed at how adaptable and engaged young people have been with the whole online teaching process over the past year,” she says.

Before the pandemic, Katie Gallagher had a weekly residency playing music in Center Parcs, which is just “up the road” from her home house in Forgney, and she hopes to get back to that once restrictions are lifted. “I can’t wait to get back to performing my music on the live stage again, and to writing lots more original songs” she says.

Katie Gallagher’s two new singles “Melon” and “The Canal” will be released on February 12 across the full range of music platforms, including iTunes, Spotify and Amazon Music, as well as TikTok.

“TikTok is absolutely huge, especially with younger people, so you simply have to get your music onto the TikTok platform for it to go anywhere, and hopefully younger listeners will get creative and make up a good dance to go along with my songs, that would be cool,” she says.